Lucasta curled her fist around the blades of Minnie’s fan. “But I intend to support myself, milady, with the students in the musical conservatory I plan to establish in Bath.”
Her ladyship’s answer to this was a decidedly unladylike snort. “How droll. And what will Lady Evers say to see a grand niece of hers turning to trade, like a farmer.” She patted Lucasta’s arm. “For your sake, child, hope your cousin marries well and secures a place for you. Rudyard.” Her ladyship turned her quizzing glass on the approaching trio.
Rudyard bowed. He was graceful, and that, with his height, contributed to his fine figure. He wasn’t portly or stuffed into his suit, like some dandies in the room. Instead he was a tailor’s dream, broad of shoulder, long of leg, with a narrow waist that some men wore corsets to achieve. Lucasta doubted that he did.
“Tell us what you think of Miss Pevensey’s robe,” Lady Cranbury demanded.
The corners of his eyes tightened slightly, as if he disliked the request. Lucasta found that curious. He lived for people hanging on the judgments that dripped from his poisonous lips, did he not?
Only his mouth didn’t look poisonous. His lips were rather shapely, for a man’s.
“The color becomes her, as I am sure she knows,” Rudyard said with a small smile at Cici. Curse him for trying to enchant her!
“More so than white?” Cici peeped from behind her fan, her lips turned up in a merry smile. “For we must have this settled, you know. My stepmother wishes to feel she is exactly informed about your preference.”
That tightness about his eyes again, there and gone. “I do hope your stepmother will place more value on your preferences than mine.”
“You have not remarkedmygown, Rudyard.” Lady Cranbury’s gown with its cascading skirts, tight bodice, and loose ruffled sleeves looked much like Lucasta’s, but with a green and pink combination to insult the eye, rather than green and orange. “Yet I am quite sure you admired Clara’s frock.”
He bowed again. “There can be no comparison, your ladyship. Lady Clara could never carry off court dress at an informal evening.”
“I’m going to tell the Duchess of Highcastle you approve of me,” Lady Cranbury cackled. “I heard you hated her headdress.”And she sailed off in triumph to bandy Smart Jeremy’s latest decree about the room.
Rudyard’s assessing gaze moved to Lucasta, and the hair on the back of her neck lifted, the sensation that hit her when she stepped before an audience to sing. That same sense of thrilling expectation, of being awake, alert, and fully alive.
“Miss Pevensey,” he drawled. “I have not the honor of being known to your companion.”
His rich, deep baritone sent a shiver down Lucasta’s spine. He’d run her to ground, like a predator, and now the slaughter could begin.
She straightened her shoulders and waited. She’d brought this on herself, after all. And if he destroyed her gown, and her inside it, perhaps the gossips would focus on that instead of his malice about Selina.
Major Mallory undertook the courtesies. “Miss Lithwick, allow me to present to you the Viscount Rudyard. Rudyard, Miss Lithwick.”
Automatically she extended her hand. “How do you do.”
“A pleasure.” He bent over her hand. As if she were a lady of consequence.
She wished his gloved fingers did not grip hers with such firm warmth. She wished he would not regard her so steadily. Jeremiah Falstead possessed a gaze of penetrating intensity, and his voice poured over her like warmed honey. She felt struck over the head, that voice left ringing in her ear, resonant as a bell.
A screech cut across his next words.
“I beg your pardon,” Lucasta said. “That second violin. He has the most gorgeous instrument, I would guess it is an Amati, yet he plays it like a country fiddle.”
“I asked if you would honor me with a dance.” Rudyard led her toward the center of the room before she thought up a refusal.
He had cut her neatly away from her friends and any hope of defense. Minnie looked haughty, Annis amused, Selina full of longing, and Cici was being led out again by Major Mallory. Was that their second dance, or the third?
Rudyard stepped them into a circle with another couple before Lucasta realized. “I ought not dance, milord. I have not been presented.”
“I was given to understand that such rules are relaxed if we are in a private home.” He turned to face her, all feral elegance.
He did not have the powdered, polished complexion of a man who spent his days indoors, sleeping off a night of dissipation. He possessed the physique of a man who engaged in regular physical activity.
And his voice was nothing like honey. Rather a rich, creamy damask silk that she wanted to rub her hands and face in.
She must not add foolishness to her other deficiencies. Lucasta could cut her hair, throw on breeches, and run away to the stage, but this was the world Cici inhabited, that her friends needed to navigate. Lucasta could not stoop so low that they would suffer from association with her.
“I particularly do not know the allemande,” Lucasta warned as the music commenced. It was a dance that would require them not only to touch but to intimately intertwine their arms. No man save her father had touched her person beyond the remotest extremities.
